


Rend; Render

by theLiterator



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:22:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In typical A/B/O verse fashion, Tony is a prickly Omega with Issues Miles Wide. Steve can't actually fix that, and neither of them is good at communicating. Oh, and there are HDM daemons, because sometimes soulbonds aren't between people.</p>
<p>The prompt was: "Alphas and omegas have daemons. Omegas have female daemons, alphas have male daemons. I don't really care where anon goes with this, so long as this idea is used. :D Bonus: Alpha!Steve/Omega!Tony"</p>
<p>I got carried away, and this is what resulted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm breaking this at POV shifts, which will make the chapter length inconsistent. This is originally posted on the kinkmeme, but I'm editing as I post. Once I catch myself up, updates will be more sporadic. Also, when I started this, I had no real idea how to handle Alpha/Omega, though I've read/written a few since.

Tony knew from an early age that nothing he or Serya did would ever please his dad. No matter what he tried, no matter how quickly he learned things his dad thought he ought to know, he always got disappointed looks, if his dad looked at him at all.

He discovered that it was due Serya on one of his dad’s missions to the arctic, a stop off for supplies at Thule Air Base. Serya had seen the lemmings teeming in the bright-bright sunlight, and she'd morphed into one, smaller than a hamster and softer than silk. He grinned at her because she was ridiculous, and she blended perfectly with the dog-fur ruff of his sealskin coat.

With her so well hidden, his dad had taken him up into the base itself, refrigerator-car siding ill-fitted to squat, ugly buildings on stilts, the sun bright in his eyes until they were inside, and there were only small windows and military personnel and one handsome secretary with a lounging arctic fox at his feet.

The colonel had a peacock perched on his shoulder, a bird daemon which terrified Tony, but he thought maybe it would be convenient to have Serya on his shoulder like that; better than having her trail after him as a German Shepherd like she tended to, certainly.

They'd discussed things like currents and fluid dynamics and whether Dad should trust his little boy with the native Greenlanders, and it was the best day of Tony's young life when Dad said "He can handle it." Serya had sniffed skeptically in his ear, but he'd put on a serious expression and nodded like he was a grown up, and his dad had patted his shoulder.

When they'd gotten back from that spring tour of the Arctic, a treasure hunt that had yielded no treasure, dad had sent him away. Tony hadn't cried while his father had been telling him about the school he'd be going to, hadn't cried at dinner either, even though his mother had been, face buried in the sleek fur of her daemon. He'd long since learned that crying made his dad hate him more.

But once he was alone in his room with his child-sized tools and his Captain America figures, he couldn't hold it back anymore. He sobbed and sobbed with no one there to comfort him but a toy and his female daemon.

School was awful.

He learned the proper things anyone learned at school: math that was too simple for him until the teacher got fed up and pushed him ahead; reading and writing. He learned other things too; what it meant that Serya was female and not male; what people expected of him because of that. He ate at tables with other... Omegas, they called them, and Tony pretended they meant it like ohms of resistance, and he categorized the people around him accordingly- that boy is brown brown orange, The girl over there is blue violet yellow...

And he, of course, was a single band of black.

The title and expectations wore against him, more furious than the Arctic sun, until one day he had filled out his course requests, and the guidance counselor had sat him down and asked him whether he might try something a bit lighter? Perhaps, she said, a psuedo-gentle smile on her lips, he might find that theatre or an art class suited him better?

He'd been so filled with anger that he didn't stop Serya from morphing into a tiny golden cat; he didn't haul her back from slashing a mean cut across the woman's face, even though it broke every taboo he'd ever been taught.

Serya as a vicious little feline, he found, suited him just fine.

He thought about what had happened that day all too frequently; as he was acing tests in engineering courses at MIT, as he walked across the stage to make his speech as salutatarian with Serya proudly displayed on his shoulder.

 _This_ suited him.


	2. Tony

Tony wasn’t tactful. He’d given up on it at around the age of twelve, and he was actually somewhat proud of the fact. It was part of his greater goal of “Fuck you, societal expectations,” and he wasn’t so self-deluded that he would ignore the fact that one of his biggest flaws was actually an asset to his goals.

That said, even he knew he’d blown it when his first reaction to meeting Captain America live and in person was, “I thought your daemon was a wolfhound?”

Yes, he knew that commenting on a man from the 40s’ daemon without invitation was pretty dumb, but _seriously_ , he’d seen the vids. His dad had been obsessed with the old bond reels, and Tony had a very good memory for the things he paid attention to, and Captain America’s daemon was a big, shaggy wolfhound.

The man before him had a gray fading to white wolf at his side, silent and watchful. It really clashed with everything Tony thought he knew about his father’s hero, and threw everything else off-kilter too. His hand went to Serya on his shoulder, because that much was constant. At least for today.

“Ignore him,” Natasha advised. “As you could probably guess from his daemon, he’s mostly a prissy little bitch.” She smiled sweetly at Tony, and he would normally have laughed at her, because, well, it was true, and it was Natalie, whom he had spent approximately two months sexually harassing at every turn.

But that all paled in front of Captain America, so instead of rolling with it, returning insult for insult, he shifted Serya off his shoulder and cuddled her to his chest.

“Leave her out of this,” he snapped, burying his fingers in her silk-fine fur and glaring at Natasha.

“Your daemon’s female?” Captain America blurted, just as incredulous as Tony had been, and Tony felt something slimy coil in his belly, down where all his old hurts lay.

“Yeah,” Tony said, grinning, all spark and steel. It was his press grin, the grin he flashed reporters and senate committees. It was his least favorite facial expression. Serya leapt from his arms and snarled at Captain America’s daemon, and Tony stopped breathing for the split second it looked like Serya was going to take a swipe at one of them.

Now that he remembered that this was _Captain America_ , he really didn’t want to commit any more social faux pas, which meant Serya really ought not succumb to her usual impulse to defend him with claws and teeth..

Serya cast a cool look back over her shoulder at him, then settled immediately in front of the Captain’s wolf and proceeded to wash her paws, making sure to extend each claw for everyone to see.

It was ridiculous, her posturing like that in front of the huge wolf, who probably outmassed her 50:1, but then, Serya was like that, he supposed.

Captain America cleared his throat, his gaze switching back and forth rather obviously between Serya and Tony. “I meant no offense, of course,” he said, smiling more charmingly than he ever had in those old reels. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ah-- All I know you as is Iron Man?”

Tony licked his lips, but pointedly ignored the offered hand. “Tony Stark. I have business to attend to,” he snapped. Just because Serya was… Just because...

He turned on his heel to leave, hesitating briefly at the doorway to catch Serya up and lift her deftly to his shoulder. He could feel the brush of her whiskers as she turned her head to glare at Steve, Natasha, and their daemons behind him.

He didn’t slow down until he was in the lowest bowels of the labs, where the smoking innards of his suit were spread across several workbenches, ready for him to repair them.

He needed to work on the resistance of the outer casing; especially if working with a god of thunder was going to be a _thing_ from now on.

He wouldn’t trade Serya for anything; he really wouldn’t. But some days he wished--

“I love you,” Tony whispered fiercely, and was rewarded with a contented purr.

_”I know,”_ she whispered in his ear. Then: ” _You might consider increasing the proportion of gold in the alloy of the exterior shell._ ”

“Seems sound on paper,” Tony agreed, “But I’m concerned about concussive force dispersion, in that case.”


	3. Steve

Steve did not know what to do with Tony. Tony was the most perplexing person he’d met in his life, and Tony apparently did not want Steve to puzzle him out, which was more than frustrating. It was _agonizing._

Arin, of course, was amused by the whole thing, teasing Steve about puppy love and chasing Tony’s Serya whenever she was on the floor, which, granted, wasn’t often. Steve didn’t think he’d met anyone who kept their daemon nearly as close as Tony kept Serya. He wouldn’t comment though, because despite the openness of this century, it made him vaguely queasy to even consider commenting on an Omega’s daemon in mixed company.

Perhaps if Tony would consent to a private conversation, he might; he’d wanted to clarify that the wolfhound in those USO reels was a proper dog, not his daemon; that Arin had been a miserable wreck when he’d been shoved away in favor of that stupid dog; that the American public associated wolves too closely with Teutons in the 40s, and it wouldn’t do at all for Captain America to be paired with one.

But of course Tony never lingered in a room with him alone. He would hardly even allow Steve to introduce himself: the closest he’d gotten was offering his hand and the words, “If you’d call me Ste-“ before Tony was off and running again.

He would have taken that as proof that letting Omegas play at being Alphas was clearly not sound practice, except--

Tony was brilliant. He was courageous and smart and flexible, and Steve knew he relied far more heavily on him in battle than on anyone else. At first he’d convinced himself it was because with Serya in the armor with him, he wasn’t nearly as vulnerable as Natasha or Clint, but he’d quickly realized that it was because Tony was good; more than good.

He’d quickly come to the point where he’d prefer Iron Man have his back over any other Avenger, which wasn’t fair, and did nothing for the constant burn of frustration he had regarding the other.

It was almost convenient, really, when they were kidnapped mid-battle.

Steve awoke first, head pounding in a way he’d come to realize meant concussion. His skin felt like it fit oddly, which meant their captors had manhandled Arin, and he barely spared a thought for his own hurts before he was lurching to the groggy daemon, running fingers through coarse fur and breathing reassurances into his ear.

Tony made a soft noise from the corner, and Steve felt protective Alpha instinct flaring up, which was echoed in Arin.

They both moved to the other corner of their cell (which was hardly _large,_ but every movement Steve made felt exaggerated and clumsy.) in time to see Tony’s eyes flick open for a moment.

“Fuck,” Tony said, voice rough. “I feel like Hulk sat on me.”

“Are you injured?” Steve asked, worried. His hands hovered over Tony’s chest, torn between his instinct to look him over and his knowledge of what Tony would do if he attempted anything like that without explicit permission. Truly explicit: embossed invitation to a White House gala levels of permission.

“Don’t worry about me,” Tony said, reaching blindly for Serya and burying his hand in her fur. “Go check on the others.”

“There aren’t any others, Tony,” Steve said softly. “It’s just us.”

Tony’s eyes opened properly, and he sat up abruptly enough that had Steve not had enhanced reflexes, their heads would have smashed together.

“Shit,” Tony said. “This is not good. Not even Natasha? Please say that you missed Natasha and--“

“Whoa,” Steve said, about to reach out to lay a calming hand on Tony’s shoulder, but halting the gesture mid-air. Tony scowled fiercely at Steve’s hand, and he sheepishly retracted it, dropping it on Arin’s head instead. “Calm down,” he continued. “It’s okay, I promise. We’ll get out of here in time for your vacation. Where are you going?”

He’d meant to distract Tony, to keep him from panicking properly, and it worked, in a sense.

Tony gave Steve one of those looks he reserved especially for people who were being particularly stupid.

“I’m _going_ to lock myself in the basement of one of my many homes, and wait out the week in total agony,” Tony said, tone ice cold.

Steve stared at him, confused. “But you said--“

Tony laughed at him. It wasn’t a very nice sound.

"I had a fairly vested interest in not letting every alpha in the world know I was about to go in heat," Tony said, and his voice was rough with emotion in way it rarely was. "Pardon me for lying."

"You could have been _hurt!_ " Steve exclaimed, unthinking. "Did you ever consider that? Even I know that much hasn't changed-- the day before; you're... you're vulnerable, Tony."

Tony stared him down, eyes alight with something that could have been anger, could have been the early stages of his heat-- most likely, though, it was both.

"I'm _never_ vulnerable," Tony said, back to that icy tone.

Steve rubbed his head, encountering the site of the concussion and wincing. Arin shuffled closer, sniffing at the hurt and whining low in his throat. "S'fine," Steve slurred, trying to reassure his daemon.

" _It isn't fine, actually,_ " Arin corrected.

"Super serum, Arin," Steve replied, his way of reminding Arin that he could tolerate more pain now, and his injuries healed quickly even without medical attention.

Tony's gaze, sharp and fierce, never left him. Steve had to duck his head and stare at his hands to escape it.

After nearly an hour of that tense, awful silence, during which Tony paced the cell, tested every wall, seam, and crevice for vulnerabilities, and Steve refused to let the concussion-induced nausea get the best of him, their captor arrived.

Steve forced himself to stand up, to demand the man tell them what he wanted from them.

"My very own pet Stark, of course," their captor replied, smirking at Tony and giving him a once-over. Tony clapped a hand to his chest, and his face drained of all color. Steve and Arin immediately took a protective stance between Tony and the man, which made Tony push between them to glare indiscriminately. His eyes were getting glassy, and his skin was flushed.

Steve sniffed the air almost delicately, and he could smell _Tony_ , and it made him _want_.

"Oh," the villain said, sounding disgusted. "You're in heat. Of _course_ you are. It's a crying shame that one of the most brilliant minds of our generation is an _Omega_. Well, hurry along then, Captain. Mount him properly. I want him able to work within the next day or so."

Steve's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to say, "There's nothing wrong with being an Omega," and then, after a second for the villain's words to catch up with him, "Wait, what?"

"Well obviously he's no use to anyone like this. Best hurry it along. You know as well as I do that holding back makes it all last longer. None of us want that, do we, Tony?"

Tony groaned, but he managed to grit out, "Fuck you!" Serya leapt at the man's daemon. The daemon darted behind the man's legs so that Serya bowled into him. Steve flinched, and Tony snarled, but the man just laughed.

"Now now, sweet girl," the man said, catching her by the scruff of her neck and holding her up. Tony fell to his knees, an awful keening noise emitting from his throat. "Wouldn't want to hurt yourself, would you?"

The man _flung_ Serya, and she would have hit the far wall, but Steve had better reflexes than all of that. He scooped her out of the air, and the timbre of Tony's noise shifted, altered. Steve gingerly set her on the floor, and she moved to duck under Arin's chest.

Smarter than her human, he though wildly.

The man left the room, slamming the steel door shut with a heavy clang. Steve instantly crouched over Tony, whispering his name with concern.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "So sorry. But I had to touch her-- she would have been hurt if I hadn't, and then you--" he cut himself off. "Sorry," he whispered again.

"Get away," Tony said, reaching for Serya but stopping just short of grabbing her, hand a whisper away from Arin's fur. Serya crept out from under him, curling into Tony with a hurt little noise that made Steve's chest ache.

"Go away, go away, go away," Tony said, all but chanting.

"Sorry," Steve repeated.

"Sorry?" Tony asked incredulously. "You always ruin everything! Go away!"

Steve looked helplessly around the cell. "Tony," he began, but Tony wasn't paying attention to him anymore. He had unzipped the front of the jumpsuit he wore under the suit, and was running his hands over his skin.

Steve swallowed thickly.

"Look, I get that you're worried, but that's pheromones; if you don't get as far away as you can, like, right now, you're not going to like what happens."

Steve finally dragged himself to the far corner of the cell, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Tony, and Arin stayed firmly where he was, crouched within an armlength of Tony, watching.

Tony's hands found his dick, and his eyes flickered closed. "Just let me... I'll be able to think again in a second, okay? I'll be--" and he didn't shut up the whole time his hand moved across his dick, even though the phrases lost coherency and meaning, until it was just words tripping across his lips, breathy and harsh.

Steve can't help but think he should be the one making Tony lose coherency, his hands on Tony's skin, under Tony's jumpsuit.

Steve made do with trying to memorize the expression on Tony's face as he tripped over the edge.

Tony sat up after a few moments, and his gaze found Steve's.

"Guess the serum didn't get rid of that particular weakness, eh, soldier?" he said, and under the breathlessness and wry undertones, there was a hint of disgust. 

Steve swallowed and made a vow to himself that he would not take advantage of Tony like this. He would soon be out of his mind with the heat, and he wouldn't be in control of his actions, but Steve would keep that disgust in mind, and he would hold strong.

"Sorry," he offered again.

Tony laughed and huddled into his own corner. No more than eight feet separated them, yet it felt like a vast chasm.

"Not your fault, Capsicle," Tony said after a few moments. "Much as it pains me to admit it, you were right. I should have given myself a little more leeway on my 'vacation'. But I'm a busy man, you know? Running a successful company, saving the free world, kissing babies and making ridiculous political contributions. It all takes up time."

Steve nodded. His skin felt clammy and tense, and Arin was still hovering close to Tony. He wanted to bury his hands in fur, let the contact center him. Arin shot him a look, and Steve bit his lip. It wasn't Arin he wanted to touch, but he refused to do anything that Tony didn't ask him to do.

No matter how tempting he became while they were locked in this cell together.

Arin whuffed out a snort and crept towards Tony, tempting the man to brush up against him.

Tony looked up at the wolf, and smiled a twisted, ugly little smile. "Babe, it's the pheromones. Promise. Go snuggle the Cap. Me and Serya got this."

Arin pointedly ignored him and settled down close enough that Steve could feel that his fur was brushing Tony's skin with every inhale.

"Arin!" Steve snapped, because the tingle in his skin was _not_ helping.

Arin ignored him too.

Steve groaned..

"Sorry, Cap," Tony said. "But it's like you said, the others will be here to rescue us in a few hours, easy as pie. Then you can be alone to detox."

"I-- detox?" Steve asked, focusing on the unfamiliar word as a way to distract himself.

"You know, breathe clean air, get the bad stuff out of your system?"

"What bad stuff?" Steve asked. He had been bludgeoned, not drugged into unconsciousness.

"The pheromones I'm spewing out like-- well, like an Omega in heat." Tony took a second to chuckle.

"Tell me what a pheromone is," Steve ordered.

Tony stared at him, incredulous.

"No, but really though," Tony said, and strain was creeping back into his voice. Steve flinched. He didn't know if he'd be able to hold himself back if Tony decided to take the edge off again. His skin was by turns burning hot and ice cold, and he couldn't imagine what Tony, who was actually in heat, not having a sympathy reaction, was going through.

"Tony, if we don't play 'define the queer words for the 20th Century Boy,' I won't be able to focus," Steve bit out.

Tony laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "Who told you to call it that?" he asked.

Steve blinked. "Clint did. You can explain the joke if you like," he offered. He had to keep focused.

"I'd need a copy of the song. I don't even have a music player. I'm useless. Fuck." Tony said, burying his head in his hands.

Serya and Arin both moved to comfort him.

"What are pheromones?" Steve asked again.


	4. Tony

Tony hated being in heat. He hated that he couldn't control himself, he hated that everyone around him was driven to the point of being unable to control themselves too, and he hated the parts of him that wanted to claw at his skin until it tore away in bleeding strips unless he started _fucking_ right now.

But what he hated more was the bland curiosity on Captain America's face as he asked Tony what pheromones were.

His dick was hard again, and the way the Captain's cheeks were starting to flush, the glassy cast to his eyes pointed toward his cellmate losing himself to Tony's body chemistry.

Bad enough that the villain of the week saw fit to pity him for the facts of his birth, but worse would be him forcing Captain America to fuck him because there was no way to keep from influencing him.

"Pheromones are... I'm not a biologist, Cap, so you'll have to... ask someone else when we get outta here, kay?"

The Captain nodded.

"Anyway, when-- when an omega is in heat, she produces-- shit." Tony dropped his head back against the wall hard enough to hurt. "Pheromones. Chemicals that are airborne, and basically they broadcast to everyone that she's ready and raring to go, you know? And alphas get the signal to start, you know, getting ready too, and omegas all know to get the fuck out of there."

The Captain nodded again.

"Did you already know all of that?" Tony asked, because his alternative was shoving his hand down the front of his jumpsuit again.

"No," the Captain said. "Well, kind of? I got taught it was sympathy-heat. That made alphas try to fight each other, and that other omegas stayed away in case they went into heat early, right?"

Tony snorted. "Sex-ed from the 1930s. Lovely. Did anyone--" he gasped and doubled over. He was overheating, he had to get out of the jumpsuit like 5 minutes ago, god, he was shrugging it off his shoulders but it wasn't fast enough-- Serya had arched up to help, grabbing an edge of the zipper with her teeth and tugging it over his shoulder.

He didn't really think what sort of eyeful he'd be giving the Captain with that, and he could see the way Cap's gaze had fastened to the center of his chest, but he did his best to ignore it.

"Did anyone give you a crash course in human sexuality circa 2012?" Tony bit out under a groan.

The Captain shook his head. "I keep getting scheduled," he said, voice rough and hoarse, "But aliens keep invading."

"Busy saving the world. Got it." Tony shut his eyes and bit his lip.

"I'm fairly certain not much has changed, though," the Captain said after a few moments. "Nothing is new, under the sun, and all that."

Tony laughed at that-- of course Captain America would pick now of all times to develop a sense of humor.

"Well, let me give you the gist of it: nothing you do while under the influence of my heat is your responsibility, and you're not gonna knock me up; I get shots for that."

"Under the influence--"

"Yeah, Cap. The pheromones, 'member?"

Captain America shook his head.

"The Omegas are the ones who lose control, though," he protested, but his pupils are swallowing his irises, and Tony knows it's only a matter of time before Captain America learns the cold, hard truth of it. (The part of his brain that will always be twelve years old starts giggling uncontrollably at the word hard, and the rest of Tony is in the throes of his heat, so a few of those giggles slip out. He must look slightly deranged.)

"You ever been with someone in heat before, Captain Tightpants?" Tony asked.

The Captain blushed, and the blood didn't fade from his cheeks after a few moments either.

"No," he finally answered. "No I have not."

"Then no offense, sugarplum, but how the hell would you know?"

"Because I just do! Which one of us can't keep his hand out of his-- clothes right now, huh?"

And wow, the Captain was right. Tony groaned. "You'll see," he muttered again, bringing his focus down to his hand and his dick, increasing the pressure and stroking roughly to get himself off fast.


	5. Steve

Time passed, and Tony grew steadily more restless, stripping his clothing off by parts, and laying sprawled on the concrete floor, staring blankly at the ceiling.

The whole time, Steve remained curled in on himself, resisting the urge to go to Tony, resisting all of his urges. Arin lay next to Tony, watching Steve with hooded eyes. Serya was curled in against his side, and Steve was miserably jealous of the daemons. 

His skin itched, and his eyes were hot, which had him rubbing them and trying not to groan aloud like some Alpha in a blue movie.

Tony abruptly sat up and crawled across the room, every movement sinuous; a desperate look in his eye.

He crouched in front of Steve and whispered, one word, hoarse and agonized. "Please."

"You don't want this," Steve said, even as his body took over and leaned in, hands going to twist through Tony's hair. "You told me no."

"Cap," Tony said, eyes bright and feverish, "I want _anything_ right now. Everything. You, the moron who kidnapped us-- if I could I'd be naked in Times Square, begging for it."

“Kay,” he mumbled, and a part of him was confused, railing against that easy acquiescence, but it seemed a quiet, irrational part of him now, and his hand tightened in Tony’s hair, pulling his head back so that Steve could take a kiss even as he shifted his weight and pushed him down. He wanted Tony pinned under him, wanted it where Tony couldn’t get away from this, and when his free hand slid over Tony’s chest, fingertips smoothing over skin and scar, muscle and metal, Tony pressed in closer, like maybe he really did want this.

His hand flattened against the Arc Reactor -- he kept thinking that there should be some kind of vibration there, some kind of _movement_ since this thing was keeping Tony alive -- and held Tony still as he pulled back from the kiss, letting Tony’s whine go free instead of swallowing it down. He tipped his head down and his lips brushed against Tony’s throat, and he breathed him in, the sweat-sex smell that should have a cold reminder of why he was doing this, why he was getting this. Instead it just had Steve growling, had him sinking his teeth into Tony’s throat and drinking in Tony's moan.

"Please, please pleasepleaseplease," Tony chanted, laying still and pliant where Steve had put him, staring up with wide eyes.

"Yes," Steve whispered back, pressing his fingers to Tony's lips and watching, fascinated, as Tony sucked on them, licking and biting and... he moaned and dragged them away. "Gonna look after you," he added. "Gonna make it all better. Promise." Tony shut his eyes and arched his back, and Steve grabbed his hips, pressing hard enough to bruise, wanting some mark of this to remain, no matter how selfish that thought might be.

"Shut up," Tony said, "Just... take care of it." The way their kidnapper had phrased it. It made something twist in Steve's gut, and he bit Tony's shoulder, the skin yielding under his teeth; a warning and a promise.

"Right, no... carry on," Tony said, spreading his legs properly in invitation, and while Steve thought Tony might have been amused under the heat and lust and desperation, he was too caught up in how _exposed_ Tony suddenly was to do anything about it.

Besides, even if he was laughing at Steve, it didn't matter. For right now, Tony _belonged_ to him, had _begged_ for it. And Steve wasn't going to let that go, not until he'd proven that he could be the proper Alpha for Tony.

He covered Tony with his body, pinning him, smiling with smug pleasure when the little testing squirms it evoked couldn't budge him, and he pressed fingers into Tony, checking--

Tony groaned, hard and primal, and Steve licked his shoulder over the bite mark, pressing his fingers deeper and feeling Tony's fingers tugging sharply at his hair.

"Ready?" he asked, crooking his fingers and making Tony's body stretch under him, taut, just to hear Tony's breath stutter on the word yes.

He fumbled a little, one-handed, with the buttons on his pants, but then he had them open and was _inside_ Tony, abrupt and hot and perfect, and he pressed his face into Tony's hair, dropping a secret kiss there, wanting to coo over him and tell him what a pretty, perfect omega he was, how good he was for taking everything Steve was giving him.

He didn't, because Tony wouldn't have let him, but he could think it, and he could turn his head slightly and see where Arin had Serya pinned, his tongue ruffling the fur on her belly while she just lay there, eyes squinty and claws tucked in safely.

The longer he held still, wrapped in Tony's heat, the more frantic Tony became, writhing and squirming and scratching Steve's back, lines of bright pleasure-pain that made him stay exactly as he was out of a perverse pleasure. _He_ would determine the pace.

Eventually, Tony settled and looked up at Steve with half hooded eyes, looking just like his daemon, trusting and wanton.

"Good," Steve said, and it came out like a growl. Tony snorted, but he stayed where he was, where Steve had _put_ him.

"Good," Steve said again, and Tony's eyes flickered slightly. The room was still and small enough that he could hear Serya's purrs and the panting of their breath. It was close and hot and awful, but all that paled against the knowledge that he had an Omega pinned beneath him, quiet and obedient and...

He pulled back enough to thrust, hard, and Tony yowled, arching his back and scrabbling at Steve's skin for purchase. Steve smirked at that, pure Alpha-pleasure, and thrust again, falling into a steady rhythm and using the hand he still had buried in Tony's hair to hold him still, to keep him from slamming his head back against the concrete in time with Steve's movements.

It was the only way he'd be allowed to exercise his protective instincts, he knew.

He wasn't expecting what came next, not really, because it was so much better than anything he'd done for himself, heat and wet and Tony whining beneath him, and Tony was still hard, leaking more wetness between them, and it was a mess, but Steve didn't care.

He thought about what Tony had asked, about being with an Omega in heat, and he hadn't wanted to say he'd never been with anyone, Omega or otherwise, and this was enough that he was glad he hadn't admitted it.

Tony looked almost _pretty_ like this, with his dark eyelashes and languid posture, and his dick hard against his belly. If he'd known this about Omegas, he might have -- no, he probably wouldn't have. The rest of it, the desperation curdling in his veins, the helplessness against it all, the way Tony had fought until... until he _hadn't_.

Steve ran a fingertip over Tony's erection, and it was slick and a little sticky, hot and soft and hard at once, and it had Tony Surging up again, this time without a hand in his hair to keep him from hurting himself, and the crack of his head against the concrete barely registered for either of them.

Steve mouthed at Tony's throat, finding the bite mark from before and worrying it as he wrapped his hand around Tony, stroking hard and rough the way he preferred it, sealing his lips around it and sucking, pressing his teeth into it when Tony started writhing again.

Tony was going to take whatever Steve gave him, at Steve's pace, he thought. And Tony recognized the rebuke, settled again, let Steve drag him roughly into orgasm.

Steve rolled them sideways while Tony was still gone on his pleasure, pulling out of him and maneuvering it so the he was between Tony and the door, snagging Arin and Serya and bringing them in close and safe too.

Tony relaxed against his chest and nuzzled into his shoulder, and Serya didn't stop purring, so he thought maybe it would all be okay, for once. He pressed another secret kiss into Tony's hair and smelled the sweat cooling there. it didn't make him want to _take_ again, and he no longer felt overwhelmed with need and desire, so he thought maybe he'd done everything right, even if it was his first time.

They repeated the cycle four more times; on the fourth, Tony's resistance was barely even token, and Steve carded his hand through his Omega's hair, concerned about his exhaustion. The way Tony just tolerated the familiarity was a little worrying.

More worrying was the way he didn't pull away after a few minutes cuddling, the way he had the other times. He just lay there, eyes shut, breathing slowing to normal.

Eventually, Steve thought, he'd pull away. Eventually he'd be back to normal, barely able to tolerate Steve -- if he didn't press charges. Steve had, after all, taken advantage of an Omega in heat.

He felt a wash of self loathing then, chill and vicious in his gut, and he tried to pull away from Tony. Tony whimpered a little and grabbed for him before he could pull away entirely, and he wondered which was worse: taking advantage of an Omega in heat, or abandoning him immediately afterwards.

Arin huffed softly from where he was curled protectively around Serya, tail and muzzle pressed firmly to Tony's side. (Steve could admit to himself that he felt a guilty frisson of happiness every time either Tony or Arin shifted and he was reminded of the contact. This new era with its lack of taboos was overwhelming, but sometimes it was just _wonderful_.)

" _Stop overthinking this,_ " his daemon told him. Steve sighed, but Arin was right. They were currently locked in some villain's dungeon, basically waiting for him to decide to come grab Tony for whatever he'd wanted Tony for in the first place.

The fact that right now, _Steve_ had likely wrought far more damage to Tony than the villain would should be secondary to the goal of survival and escape.

Of course, he was too tired and sated to move around or analyze their surroundings himself; if Tony had been in the throes of heat when he'd looked earlier, maybe he'd missed something.

But still. Secondary.

Steve thought of Bucky suddenly, chained up and alone, Garos locked in a cage two rooms away.

He'd never been good at prioritizing which things to worry about, after all.

(Garos had been a feline too, sleek and dark and vicious. God, _Garos_.)

He felt sure that Tony would have liked Bucky a lot more than he liked Steve. Bucky had been a stereotypical Alpha in a way that had him and Howard Stark knocking shoulders. Maybe that was why Tony didn't like Steve at all.

Bucky probably would never have given in to the sympathy heat. He was much better at looking after Omegas properly than Steve ever had been. Steve thought maybe that was because growing up Steve had been classed in with the Omegas more often than not, given, well... given the circumstances.

Tony sighed into the silence, his lips parting slightly. Steve realized he was sleeping, so he pulled away again, collecting their clothing from where it had been scattered around the cell.

His white undershirt he sacrificed to clean Tony up as best he could before redressing him in his jumpsuit. The connections it made to the arc reactor were cold against his fingers, but he wasn't going to risk his Ome-- Tony by guessing how to plug them in. Besides, it might be better if Tony weren't electrically wired to his clothing when the villain showed back up.

Tony woke enough to maneuver his arms and legs into the clothing, but he seemed generally content enough to let Steve keep control.

Steve wiped himself cursorily with his undershirt, but it wasn't particularly useful. He could use a hot shower. And about a week's worth of sleep. Heck, while he was imagining, he might as well picture one of the decadent beds in Tony's tower, and Tony's head on the pillow next to him.

Serya woke and stretched, every inch of her pressed up close against Arin, then she gazed up at Steve. " _You're a good person, Steve Rogers_ ,"

Steve stared at her. "I didn't think you guys knew my name," he said after a few moments, blushing hard. Besides, he _wasn't_ good, and the fact that apparently Serya couldn't see how awfully he'd just acted broke his heart a little.

"I'm... I'm going to put on my pants now. Do you think that's okay?"

" _Yes. See, this is why you are a good person_."

Steve snorted at that, but he shimmied into his leather pants without another comment, and when Serya started rubbing up against his legs, purring, he acted on impulse and scooped her against his chest. God, he loved the feeling of someone else's daemon in his arms, and Serya was the perfect size for it, small enough to curl up around and inhale the scent of her fur. She smelled like Tony did; like oil and the metallic tang that reminded him of nighttime battles on the European front, like musk and sweat. Arin rolled over so his bulk was covering Tony's, and he seemed half protective, half possessive, which made Steve smile a little wistfully.

The two of them should enjoy this closeness while they could, because he had a feeling that it was all a fever-dream that would shatter around them once they got out.

Steve settled onto the floor next to Tony, his back to the wall, hand curled in Tony's hair, Serya safe in his lap. After a while, he'd relaxed enough to shut his eyes, almost sleeping himself.

Of course that was when the villain decided to fling open the door. Steve and Arin went instantly on the alert, and he dumped Serya somewhat unceremoniously onto Tony's chest as he scrambled to his feet.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

The villain ignored him stepped around to kick Tony. Tony yelped and rose to his feet with fear in his eyes.

Steve slammed the villain against the wall, barely noticing the electrical charge that shot up through his feet. Tony noticed, however, gasping and falling to the ground in a twitching heap.

Steve immediately released the villain and crouched at Tony's side.

"Just because I don't feel the need to surround myself with easily compromised bodyguards does _not_ mean that I'm unprotected. Honestly, Tony, how can you stand to be around this moron?"

Tony pulled himself back to his feet, Serya now safely on his shoulder (where she belonged, Steve thought), one hand pressed grimly to his arc reactor.

"Usually," Tony said, voice hoarse and strained, "I'm not around him."

The villain hummed, smiling maliciously between Steve and Tony. "Oh?" he asked, and that single word spoke volumes; enough that Steve blushed

"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it? Anyway, my analysis of the room indicates that pheromone levels are back to normal levels. Time for you to earn your keep, Tony Stark."

"Fine," Tony said. "But I should warn you: the last time someone locked me up and made me 'earn my keep', I became Iron Man and rained down fire and brimstone in my wake." Tony was smiling pleasantly, and it was then that Steve realized that that smile, Tony's default expression, was plastic and false. He was suddenly grateful that Tony had never smiled that smile at him.

"Oh, I'm well aware. You're an engineer, and engineers are far more dangerous than any soldier might be. You have no honor, and lots of knowledge. A delightful combination, really. No, I'm not having you building anything. Just designing."

Tony raised an eyebrow, deliciously superior. Steve was rather amused by him, the way he refused to acknowledge that the villain truly had the upper hand here.

And maybe the villain didn't, after all. If he gave Tony access to a computer, Tony might be able to rescue them. He knew that Tony was good with wires and electricity, and that he relied on computers rather more than even Bruce, which was quite a lot. It followed, he thought, that Tony was good with computers as well.

"Well then. Lay on, and death to him who first cries 'Hold, enough!'"

"Shakespeare, Tony? Really?"

Steve remained silent on the matter, choosing not to point out to the villain that Tony had butchered the quote, and not in the usual way.

Clearly, Tony was planning on outmaneuvering their captor, and just as clearly, their captor thought he couldn't be outmaneuvered.

There was little Steve could do as they walked down the hallway; now that he knew they were there, he could see the tiny lines zigzagging across the concrete beneath their bare feet. It might barely faze him, but it had a very clear effect on Tony; one Steve was not going to risk without a better picture of the overall layout of the facility in his head.

Ahead of him, the villain was explaining to Tony exactly what he was to design, using sweeping gestures and phrases like "equivalent yield" and "E. M. shield", not using words that Steve could readily make sense of, though it did put him in mind of a bomb.

He remembered Tony's "nuke" from the battle for Manhattan, remembered the way SHIELD had refused flat-out to explain what it was afterwards. He remembered the fear and resignation in his teammates' voices when they'd discussed it after the fact.

"After all, your father certainly had the creative genius required for this sort of thing, didn't he, Tony?" the villain was asking, and Steve focused more attention on the conversation, ready to drink in every detail. Howard Stark had been... not a friend, exactly, but he'd been familiar, and Steve hadn't encountered anything familiar since he'd woken up in that false hospital room.

"The days of the Manhattan Project are over," Tony said, voice flat.

Their captor sighed. "You think a war need be 'global' before nuclear weapons are necessary?"

"I think that nuclear weapons are never necessary," Tony replied coldly.

Their captor hummed again. "Such a shame that you should be born an Omega, Tony. So soft-hearted."

Serya growled at that, and Steve bit his lip to keep from interjecting something in Tony's defense. He had no real idea what the two of them were talking about; just that it was something so bad that no one wanted him to find out what it was.

Not for the first time, something inside him railed at the cotton-wool bonds SHIELD had wrapped him in in this time period.

He quashed it; now was not the time.

The arrived at a room that was empty save for drafting tables and paper. Steve looked around at the tools Tony was being provided and despaired. He recognized and knew how to use every single item in the room. Tony would not be able to engineer them an escape from here, which left it up to him; and unless he could find a way to protect Tony against the electric floor, they were well and truly trapped.

"I'll leave you to it then, gentlemen," their captor said before sealing them in again.

Steve looked at Tony, who was wandering around the room, picking up a square and tossing it aside in disgust, scattering cup full of drafting pens all across the floor, and cursing a blue streak through it all.

He stopped in front of Steve, a grim look on his face, resignation in his eyes.

"We're fucked," he said, and Steve grimaced.

"I'd gathered," he said slowly. "The floor--"

"Explains why he took our shoes," Tony interrupted, shrugging hard and flicking his eyes up to the corner of the ceiling. They were being observed, then.

"Yeah," Steve agreed, hoping Tony could read the double meaning there. He wasn't as good at subtleties as some people were. "Are you going to build him his... his nuclear weapon with its E. M. shielding?" he asked.

Tony laughed. "They didn't tell you after all, then? I told them you'd have to be told eventually, or you'd find out the hard way."

"Tell me?"

Tony grabbed one of the high stools and swung it out to sit on, knees bent and eyes hard. He didn't look a thing like an Omega then, even with Serya keeping practiced balance on his shoulder.

"What did they tell you about the end of the War?" Tony asked, and something about his inflection made it so Steve didn't have to ask which war, didn't consider Korea or Vietnam or the Cold War (which no one had much spoken to him about, admittedly He'd like, one day, to ask someone what had made the war cold and get an answer instead of a deflection, but that day wasn't going to come for awhile, if SHIELD had any say in it.)

Arin answered for him. "They like to pretend war doesn't exist."

Tony snorted. "That's stupid," he said. "Steve was born of war. They shouldn't baby him on that count, at least."

Steve shrugged. "It's not like I can get answers from anyone else."

Tony laughed. "When we get out of here, I'm introducing you to Wikipedia. Hell, this makes me wonder if maybe you never got to sit through a brief on human sexuality because the higher ups didn't want you to."

Steve shrugged.

"Anyway, the European victory was basically everything you expected, Allied troops rolling across the European theatre, etc. etc. etc. But Japan, well... The Japanese Imperial Army was full of honor to the gills, and they simply would not lay down arms. So the SSI started pouring funds into one of its offshoots down in New Mexico, and my dad, he-- well he had to be on the front line of every bit of technology. They called it the Manhattan Project, and they built bombs. They built _the_ bomb."

"Nuclear weapons," Steve supplied, then his brain called up that other word; "Nukes."

"Exactly. You're smarter than they'd like you to be, aren't you?"

Steve shrugged again. "Have to be."

Tony nodded, leaning forward. "You understand explosive yields, right? TNT and stuff?"

"Yes," Steve said, then added dryly. "I even know what a mortar round is."

Tony smiled at him, and it was crooked and sly and not at all plastic.

"Well, the stuff you were using in the trenches was in hundreds of tons of TNT measures, right?"

Steve nodded. "The big stuff was, but I only dealt with bombers if I needed a lift somewhere."

"Yeah, well what the Manhattan Project came up with had thousands-- eventually millions-- of tons of yield."

Steve flinched. "That would level cities."

"That did level cities, by presidential order."

"Roosevelt wouldn't--"

"He died. They didn't tell you that? His Vice--"

"Truman? They never explained the circumstances, there was just a list of presidents to memorize. Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson." There had been a lot of Presidents, really. He still missed Roosevelt and his steely disposition.

Tony blinked at that. "Please tell me someone told you about the Kennedy assassination, at least?"

Steve blinked back, and he felt more lost than he ever had. "Assassination attempt?" he asked; begged, really.

"Shit. Really? Shit. No wonder you come across like a superior caricature of a hero. You don't... they won't..."

Arin collapsed on top of Steve's feet. Steve bent slightly to scratch his ears, needing the contact.

"They destroyed a city?" he asked, finally; returning to the current conversation.

"Two," Tony affirmed.

"That's..." he frowned, thinking of Howard and his quick, clever hands. "That's one hell of a legacy."

Tony smirked at him.

"It brings me such joy and comfort, too," he replied, gesturing grandly around them.

Reminded abruptly of where they were, Steve reeled back.

"Look, earlier I--"

"Forget it," Tony snapped, and his demeanor shifted instantly. "Seriously, I know it's hard for a man like you to work with a sweet little Omega or something, but we're stuck for now. So, you know. Forget it. Pretend I'm an Alpha or something. I don't care, really,"

Everything else he was saying, however, seemed to indicate that Tony did care, and quite a bit at that.

Steve held up his hands. "I care though. What I did was--"

"Oh, for the love of-- Seriously. Drop it!"

Steve opened his mouth to argue further, then shook his head. If Tony didn't want to talk about the experience, well-- it would probably add insult to injury for him to push the subject. Especially since he'd been the one to inflict the injury in the first place.

"Right," Steve said after a second. "The priority is survival, then escape. Once we've accomplished that, we can address the rest."

"Or, we can never bring it up again. Seriously. Next time I'm scheduling two weeks, and damned if Fury shuts my leave down again."

Fury had shut him down? That was-- he found it hard to believe that Fury, who insisted on keeping Steve sheltered from this century for his own good, would harm an Omega like that, however indirectly.

"I'll speak with him about it," Steve said. Serya was giving him a satisfied, half-lidded look from Tony's shoulder, but Tony flung another tool across the workshop in frustration.

"Don't." Tony snapped. "I don't need your favors, Captain."

Steve nodded and backed away. It was all he could offer for the moment.

Steve had seen men draw before; Tony's hand moving swift and sure across the drafting table shouldn't be so _fascinating_ to him, but it was. Serya was keeping watch from the second stool, and Steve was standing, Arin pressed warm and comforting against his legs. He wanted to know more; he wanted to know _which_ cities, he wanted to know why a president had been assassinated, he wanted to know whether Tony was going to cooperate after all, or if he was just stalling for time. Instead he just watched as insanely detailed, proportionate schema appeared under Tony's hands.

When Steve's hand stilled for focusing, Arin pulled away and got his paws up on the table next to Tony, trying to see. Serya climbed up to join him, brushing her cheek against his and whispering in his ear, nothing he could hear, but his awareness of Arin had it like a soft hum at the edge of his consciousness. Tony's hand went absently to Serya's fur, and it left behind a smudge of dark graphite and a shiver of sparks against Steve's skin where he'd accidentally gotten Arin, too. Steve wondered why, when Arin being touched by anyone else had him feeling out of sorts and aching, Tony's touch felt so different. He wondered if there was a person he could ask, once they were free, if he could ask _Tony_ , and then he went to start examining their new cell.

There was a control panel near the door; it could be the lock, it could be the intercom, it could be a dummy panel to trick Tony. He remembers the first time he’d opened a panel like this—‘It seems to run on some form of electricity’, and Natasha handing him a wrapped gift (the paper had been slick and brightly colored and utterly foreign to him,) that contained a book called Electronics for Dummies. He’d enjoyed it; it had been well-written, but he’d known from about a third of the way through that electronics was never going to be his strong suit.

That was okay, though—he was pretty sure Tony would have resented him even more if it had been.

Still, he knew, now, the difference in a resistor and a capacitor, and, more importantly, that most electronics systems needed electricity to run, so he poked at the innards of that panel and decided to separate a capacitor from the system.

The room went dark, which seemed somewhat unlikely, and Tony started laughing after a moment, and Steve waited patiently for his eyes to adjust while Tony shuffled papers around and then, abruptly, pressed close against his back.

Steve had to resist the urge to lean against him, and Tony whispered, warm against his ear the way Serya had Arin, “What the hell were you thinking?”

“That electronics need electricity to run?” he replied frankly, and Tony laughed a little to himself, hoisted Serya to Steve’s shoulder, and said, “What did he do?”

“ _Nothing that could cause this_ ,” she said, soft and sweet in ways Tony never was. She rubbed against Steve’s cheek for good measure. “ _With enough power, I think you can open the door from here._ ”

Tony rubbed a hand against his own cheek, a gesture Steve sensed more than saw, and then he slid deftly between Steve and the panel, and Steve stumbled slightly in an effort not to touch him more than was necessary. Every brush of skin made him feel more conflicted about Tony, and he had been plenty conflicted before his teammate’s heat.

“Well,” Tony said, and his cheerful tone was at odds with the set of his shoulders. “Power, we have.”

It took Tony unzipping the front of his jumpsuit partway for the meaning there to seep in, and when it did, Steve had to strangle his automatic protest, because this was _Tony_. Tony always had a plan, and he’d trusted Iron Man more than any other Avenger up to now; why should he stop at this point.

But the arc reactor was what kept his Ome—his teammate alive, and somehow, he thought using it casually to open a door, even a door in an evil villain’s dungeon, was reckless and he ought to stop him.

But Tony wouldn’t appreciate the effort, so he nudged Serya off onto her own human’s shoulder, and went to collect the papers Tony had been drafting on. No matter _what_ Tony had been working on, false schematics or an ice cream maker or an actual… nuke, it wouldn’t do to leave them in enemy hands.

The blue light from Tony’s chest was the only illumination in the room, so Tony was relying heavily on Serya’s night vision and odd contortions of his body to see by. Steve was half-tempted to offer him a boost, but. But.

For Tony, it seemed, Steve always made exception. He wondered, idly, what might happen if he stopped.

The door slid open, and they moved as one, Tony tucking the wires away and zipping his jumpsuit back up even as they moved smoothly into the corridor.

Arin was good at killing. It should bother him—sometimes it had, but Bucky and Garos had always reassured him that it was alright that where he couldn’t take a life, his daemon could (Garos had never seemed quite right, after, but Steve had been the only one who’d noticed. Maybe it had been Steve who’d changed, instead, and Garos had always been the same? Who could know, now, anyway?) and today proved no different. Where Steve disarmed the first guard while Tony finished with his zipper, Arin tore the second’s throat out, and Steve’s mouth tasted coppery and sweet and he had to swallow several times to get over it.

“You too, huh?” Tony asked, and Serya leapt from his shoulder to join Arin in scouting ahead.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Steve said, colder than he meant to and with fear in his gut.

“Yeah,” Tony said wryly. “Me neither.”

The hallway was weirdly deserted outside the initial guards, and Arin’s hackles were raised. Steve, later, would swear that this was the only reason he knew to pin Tony to the floor before the explosion actually went off.

Then, his world went black again.


	6. Tony

Tony, for the split second between Steve hitting him and the explosion hitting him, was furious.

Then, as the concussive force stole his breath and his hearing, he was terrified.

Steve was bleeding and unconscious and heavy, and he might have a healing factor, but his pulse proved thready and weak, and even old soldiers can die, he knows, he’s seen it all his life.

“Cap,” he says, trying not to jostle him too much; blood is seeping through his jumpsuit, thick and slow and hot, and not his own, and he doesn’t want to aggravate that injury. “Cap, come on, you need to rescue me. I’m an Omega in distress, now, and you’re the perfect Alpha. All the comics say so, you know. Come on, Cap.”

He groped around for Serya, but she wasn’t in touching distance. Arin, he thought suddenly, going cold where Steve’s blood wasn’t warming him. If Arin were far enough away, there could be Tearing, and Steve—

No one deserved that pain. (He remembered the focus Yinsen had taught him, remembered the way he’d forced himself to think only of survival, remembered the feel of Serya’s fur, soft under his palms, once they’d both escaped.)

No one, he thought bitterly, deserved to die for him. And here he was, Steve still and dying, all to protect him, and Arin nowhere to be found, so he allowed himself a moment of weakness and pressed his forehead up against Steve’s cheek.

“It’s okay,” he said to no one in particular. “I’m Tony Stark. I’ll come up with something.”

Steve groaned.

“Or, you could just regain consciousness. I mean, it would be depriving the world of one of my highly sought after and workably brilliant ideas, but there are so many of those floating around already that it probably wouldn’t—“

“Arin?!” Steve demanded, and Tony flinched.

“C’mon, Cap,” Tony said, nuzzling him because it was the only contact he could offer. “I thought the world revolved around me. You’re destroying my worldview.”

“It hurts!” Steve insisted, his voice shaking and weak. “God, Arin, is he dying? Can he die? Arin?!”

Tony shut his eyes, which was a mistake, because there was a flashback hovering at the edges of hi senses.

“Steve,” he said, cold and detached. “You need to focus on my voice.”

“Arin is—“

“Arin is fine,” Tony lied, because, as Yinsen had explained once Tony was sane enough to realize he was lying, you have to lie about such things during a Tearing. Besides, if Arin were dead, so too would Steve be. Tony kept that thought close and quiet.

“Arin is fine,” Steve repeated. “I need to focus on your—what’s happening? Why is this happening?”

“Arin is fine,” Tony repeated. “He is just very far away right now.”

Steve gasped and flailed as if he was trying to escape, and Tony hooked his leg around Steve’s and somehow forced his hand through the rubble to hold Steve there.

“I have to go to him!”

“No, you don’t. Have you ever met a witch, Steve?”

“I—once, yes. She was…”

“Yes,” Tony whispered. “Yes she was. And where was her daemon?”

“That’s different. They’re different…”

“You need to focus on your heartbeat, Steve. Focus on you. The deepest parts that Arin never touches.”

“Arin!”

“Trust me, Steve, please—“

“Of course I trust you, Tony,” Steve said, and he adjusted his position enough to start into Tony’s eyes until he thought maybe, in this too, Captain America would prove better than him. “How… oh, God, Arin… he needs me!”

“Listen to your hearbeat. Let everything go quiet, and listen to your heartbeat, and forget him.”

“I—“

Tony shut his eyes. “It’s the only way to survive intact,” he whispered.

“Tony, is Serya…”

“It’s not Tearing if you both survive intact,” he said, soft and low; a secret he never knew how to tell until this moment. “And I can still feel her if she’s near enough. I can… it wasn’t Tearing, but… Find your heartbeat. Whoever cut the power will find us soon, and then, then everything will be okay. But you need to count out the beats…”

Steve’s whole body relaxed, and his breathing quietened. The seep of blood against Tony’s skin slowed, then stopped, and since Steve had to forget Arin, Tony focused on remembering for him, the way he’d chase Serya until she was forced up to Tony’s shoulder, the way he hovered just as protectively as Steve himself did.

The way he wasn’t a wolfhound and never could be.

After a long period of time punctuated only by slight hitches in Steve’s breathing when he remembered, and then the easing when he managed, once again, to forget, Natasha’s voice came through the rubble.

“Captain? Iron Man?”

Tony breathed out. Inhaled, and heard the call again.

“Here!” he shouted. “You need to find Serya.” Please, he thought, since he didn’t dare mention Arin’s name aloud and break Steve’s trance. Please let them be together.

“We need to get you out from under this… What about—“

Tony cut her off. “Now. You need to find them now.”

There was a string of Russian cursing, and then the sounds of her voice carrying the weight of authority and secret knowledge and then the debris around them shifted and Natasha started calling for Serya.

When they were finally pulled from the wreckage, the daemons hadn’t been found, so Tony made sure, with quiet threats, that the SHIELD agents running triage wouldn’t mention Arin, and he tore off in the direction he thought they’d been scouting, and searched through the parts of him that had used to contain Serya for the least little hint of her location.

“If you left him, if you—“ Steve was good and perfect and an Alpha and a hero in all the ways Tony never could be, and his father had maybe never managed to save him, but he also hadn’t done so poorly as to Tear him from his daemon. Tony would not go down in history for that.

He would not, if he could help it, allow anyone to be Torn from their daemon. Not even his worst opponent. Not even Obie, would he have allowed this to happen to.

He found her. He will never determine how, except that in one moment, she was as absent as ever, and in the next, he knew which way to turn, which parts of the debris to heave aside to reach her, and then she was in his arms and he could sense her again.

“Serya,” he breathed, and she scrambled to his shoulder, his perfect, perfect daemon, and Arin was there, writhing in agony on a bed of bent and shattered metal, and Tony hauled him bodily from the wreckage.

He had no idea how far he had come, and Arin was heavy, a dead weight in his arms, but Serya mewled unhappily in his ear and it didn’t matter, because Steve and Arin would. Not. Be. Torn.


	7. Natasha

It took more favors than Natasha would normally call in, even for a friend, to ensure that Tony would never know the sight he made, stumbling towards Steve, Arin unconscious in his arms, Serya on his shoulder, hissing and furious.

 

He dropped Arin next to Steve behind the SUV Steve had refused to get into, and grabbed Steve’s hand, burying it in Arin’s fur.

 

“He’s fine,” Tony said, and Steve didn’t react any more than he had to any other agent that had been sent. “Arin’s right here.”

 

It was like watching a dying man suddenly stop dying, and Natasha wondered, deep and dark and quiet where they’d never know she’d wondered it, if Tony had reacted that way too, once Yinsen had freed Serya. No one had believed that account, she knew; no one but herself, and Fury, and Coulson.

 

Tony Stark was not his father’s son, not the way he could have been, and in her quiet assessment, that was for the best.

 

“Arin?” Steve asked, and Tony didn’t reply; his face was gray and drawn and suddenly full of cold fury.

 

“Yes,” Tony said, the gentleness in his tone not giving any indication of the rictus on his face. Steve slid into unconsciousness, and after he’d eased him to the ground, Tony fled.

 

Natasha touched his arm as he passed her, and he slowed.

 

“It’s not fair. I—“ he sucked in a breath, repeated himself with enough of his typical self-loathing that she wanted to do more than touch his arm. Here was an omega in distress. Here was an alpha who knew exactly why. Here was where biology dictated one comfort the other.

 

Here was where they both fell short of biology and everything society wanted from them.

 

“It isn’t,” she said.

 

“I can still feel her if she’s near enough,” Tony said, eschewing unoffered comfort. “It wasn’t Tearing. I can still feel her.”

 

“She’s your daemon,” Natasha said. It wasn’t quite agreement, because she didn’t quite agree with him, but it made Tony nod once and continue on. It wasn’t agreement, but it was true, and the truth mattered to Tony in ways it didn’t matter to others.

 

Tony left, and she called in her favors, and they were both terrible at doing what others would do in their places, but excellent at doing what needed to be done.


	8. Clint

The set of Tony’s jaw did not bode well. Clint wasn’t sure what to do, but Natasha had given him a _look_ that indicated he should stay with Tony and Steve while she took care of things.

Staying with him was proving difficult, however. If Clint hadn’t known, fundamentally, the way all Alphas who were close to Omegas _knew_ things, that Tony had been about to go into heat when the alert had come, he would have been livid with fury over the marks the medics revealed as they stripped him down.

He knew territorial drive was stupid in Tony’s case, because a) Tony would hate him for it and b) whose territory? They were all of them Alphas, even Bruce, and Tony’s little Serya was the lone female of their little pack of daemons. Would he fight with Nat over something as simple as scenting an Omega who didn’t want it?

Challenge the Hulk?

Hell. Fucking. No. So no territorial drive allowed, except--

There were kind of two options, for how Tony came to be so thoroughly debauched, heat completely over by the smell of things despite how early he’d been in the cycle, what, 30 hours ago?

He wondered which option was really more appealing.

While Tony deigned to allow one of the medics to put butterfly strips along the worst of his lacerations, Clint sidled up to him and leaned against the nearest surface that wouldn’t put him in hitting distance.

“Nice hickie,” he said, neutral in the way only he could manage. Nat was neutral with intent, soft velvet over a shard of glass. He was neutral with lack of intent, and that was better for situations like this. No wonder she’d left him to deal with Tony and Steve (mostly Tony).

“Thanks,” Tony said, smile turning on, despite Tony’s intentions, Clint rather thought. And wasn’t that just sad? Tony couldn’t even be defensive in private (semi-private?) without going all press-bright and bushy tailed. “I picked it out especially.”

“Oh?”

Tony sighed, then rubbed his temples, fouling up the medic’s attempts at cleaning and bandaging a nasty cut at the edge of his hairline. Serya batted his hands away and made apologetic half-purrs in the medic’s direction, which only caused the medic to freeze up worse, faced with the possibility of accidentally touching someone’s daemon.

“Did you know the good Captain had never been around an Omega in heat before?”

Clint choked on air.

“Are you okay?” he demanded, and screw territoriality being a bad thing-- virgin Alphas were the very worst-- and Steve had super strength.

“Am I-- Clint, he doesn’t know what _pheromones_ are. He thinks…” Tony trailed off and sighed, glancing sidelong at the curtain the hid the veritable covey of medical staff surrounding the unconscious man’s bed.

“Tony.” Clint said, and Tony didn’t move or finish his thought. “Tony!” he said again, firmer, hand darting in past Serya to tap firmly at the other man’s cheek.

“What!” Tony snapped back, eyes flicking to Clint’s face. “What do you want me to say? ‘Oh boy, I popped Captain America’s cherry and all I got were 16 stitches and a nice hickie?’”

“I want you to say what’s on your mind,” Clint tried.

“I’m furious with him,” Tony said, voice low and defeated. “I’m furious with him, and I’d forgotten about the whole heat thing until you brought it up.”

“Then what are you angry about?” Clint asked, moving in close enough that he could feel the warmth of the other man’s skin.

“It’s… selfish. I’m selfish.”

“Yeah?” Clint said. “We know. Still keep you around, though.”

“Despite everything.”

“Not a single one of us cares that you’re an Omega, Tony,” Clint said, because hey, he may be the least serious of all of them, but maybe that meant Tony would believe him if he said it.

“You’re telling me Captain 40s over there won’t try to open doors for me? Give me his coat when it’s cold?”

“Being aware of you as an Omega doesn’t mean he gives a fuck about it in any other sense than politeness,” Clint said. The words came out jumbled up and not-quite-right, but Tony wouldn’t listen after all, so did it matter.

“It’s my fault any of this happened.”

“It’s God’s fault. Or evolution’s. Or… I dunno. Biology?”

Tony looked back at Clint then, eyes clear and frank and terrifyingly empty of emotion.

“It’s my fault.”

Clint blinked, and then Tony was striding from the room, back a straight, angry line. The medics didn’t bother to argue with him, and Clint wondered for only a second if he should follow him, because Steve started thrashing and calling for Arin.

Tony was at least upright and coherent. Small victories, really.

Clint ducked around the curtain and ignored the small chorus of “Let us do our job!”s that greeted his arrival. Arin was on the floor next to Steve’s bed, apparently unconscious, and Steve’s eyes were wild as he fought the half-dozen people trying to hold him in place.

Deciding the Steve was going to win either way, Clint made himself useful by prying off two of the orderlies. He ignored their betrayed looks and pressed right into Steve’s space.

“Focus, Steve,” he said. “You know where Arin is. You tell me.” Arin didn’t stir, which was worrying.

Lerome nipped lightly at Clint’s ear, then glided carefully towards Arin, landing delicately on his back. The look he sent towards the orderlies oozed disdain.

" _They're experiencing Bond trauma_ ," he said.

"Get him on the floor _now_. Lerome, can you wake Arin up?"

Everyone gaped at him, but he ignored them, getting a shoulder under Steve's bulk and rolling him towards the side of the bed Arin was laying next to. He rolled him over again, and gravity did the rest.

The shock of the impact must have helped too, because Steve was looking at Clint again, and actually seeing him.

Steve blinked.

"What the hell is going on in here?" Presaged Fury's arrival in medical. "Iron Man's signed himself out AMA, they tell me. An Omega with symptoms of post-heat languor. Captain America's gone crazy, they tell me."

"Lerome says it's Bond trauma, sir. And given how far apart they were trapped--"

"Tony showed no signs of--"

"He wouldn't," Steve said. Everyone turned to stare at him. He was pale and trembling and practically _inside_ Arin they were clinging so tightly.

"So they wouldn't," Fury agreed. Clint shrugged when he caught several medics looking at him. He didn't know shit about Bonds. Or Tony, really. That was Nat's bailiwick, and he wasn't so dumb as to step on her toes.

"Sir," Steve said, shattering the awkward quiet that had seeped into the crowd at Fury's pronouncement. "I'd like to surrender myself into police custody while you investigate the outcome of this mission."

"Denied," Fury said, and his cheek started twitching. About a third of the medics chose that moment to evacuate medical. Clint wasn't sure if that made them smart or chickenshit.

"Sir, I acted with conduct unbecoming an officer, and will comply fully with any investigations or tribunals you wish to effect."

"Am I talking to myself here? De. Nied."

"Sir, I assaulted Tony Stark."

Fury barked out a quick burst of unamused laughter. "Rogers, you're in SHIELD medical. You'd be hard pressed to find someone here who hasn't. You want to tell me what this is about so we can all go home?" Only two medics remained by the end of Fury's rant. One blatantly curious, the other trying still to examine Steve.

"Tony went into heat while we were captured. Despite making his lack of consent clear both verbally and nonverbally prior to losing his faculties, I ... Took advantage of his physical state."

"I heard he walked out of here on his own two feet. Did we get X-rays?"

"Yes sir," the medic treating Steve said around the flashlight between his teeth. "No major trauma or injury. I made him strip, of course. Minor injuries congruent with physical trauma from a building and a super soldier falling on him, superficial contusions consistent with minor heat frenzy."

"Minor?!" Steve demanded shrilly. "I hurt-- minor?!?"

"Have you ever been with an Omega in heat before, son?" Fury asked, abruptly gentle and paternal. The last gawker fled, and Clint offered Fury a silent hi-five that was met with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged.

"No sir." Steve said stiffly.

"I'd say you need to talk to the Omega then, but considering-- Steve, son, how big was the cell?"

"About eight foot cubed, sir."

Clint started cursing, swift and furious and even, and Fury rubbed his temples. "Bars?"

"Concrete with some sort of electrical grid laid in. He shocked us with it; it affected Tony severely, limiting our options for escape."

"Steve, there was no way you could have stopped what happened in that cell."

"The fact that Tony could walk out of there is pretty amazing, considering," Clint interjected.

"I am an Alpha!" Steve snapped, and his trembling became all the more apparent. "It is my responsibility to protect my Omega! I failed in the most egregious way possible, and you... You... Oh, God, Arin, I--"

He turned his head and puked all over the floor.

“If he’s undergoing Bond trauma,” the medic said, deftly stepping away from the mess, “We should get him and his daemon into an iso ward and let them reacquaint.”

“Alright; I’ll get him down there,” Clint said. Steve gathered Arin up and stood, wobbly and pale.

“We could get a gurney or something,” he suggested, already prepared for Steve’s negative response, wedging himself against Steve on one side to help steer.

Natasha’s voice crackled in his ear. Hacking the comms again; that was his Nat.

“I’ve arranged for the counselor we use for initial-heat Omegas to be in iso ward 3.”

Initially, the idea threw him, but then he thought about it. Steve wasn’t taking any Alpha’s word for his behavior being perfectly acceptable, so perhaps an Omega. A trained, soothing, knowledgeable Omega.

He tapped his earpiece. “And Tony?”

“I’m handling it.”

Sometimes Nat’s supreme competence bothered the hell out of him, but sometimes it just made his life easier.

“Tony?” Steve said, sounding said and vulnerable in the way on Captain America could manage.

“Nat says she’s on it. He’ll be fine.”

“He needs someone,” Steve said, more firmly. “You should make sure he has an Omega to talk to. Or… is that how it’s done now?”

“Unlike you, he’s used to this. It happens, right?”

“He said no,” Steve said, firm in his convictions. Clint sighed. And he’d thought Tony would be the difficult one-- but then, he probably _was_ and this was actually easy by comparison. “He was disgusted by the idea of it. He’s never liked me on a personal level, and I violated what small professional trust he had in me.”

“Okay, Steve, I like you, right?” Steve stopped short and stared at Clint.

“I like you, so I’m saying this from a place of liking and respect. Shut the hell up. Tony will kick your ass if you try to take the blame for this, and then he’ll kick mine and try to kick Nat’s for not talking _sense_ into you. Now you and Arin are going to go be alone together so you can work through the Bond trauma, and when you come out, you’re going to talk to Tony if I have to tie you to a chair. But until then? No guilt.”

Steve opened his mouth to protest.

Clint shook his head. “Nope. Don’t care. You’ve undergone two very emotional… things in a very short time. I don’t care what you think is right. For now, we’re doing this the way the non-traumatized people say you should, okay?”

Steve ducked his head, then continued the motion so his face was buried in Arin’s fur.

“I thought I’d never feel him again,” Steve allowed. His voice sounded like defeat and gunsmoke.

“Can you feel him now?” Clint asked, morbidly curious.

“Yes. I could before, too, but Tony said I wasn’t allowed to think about him or it would hurt worse, and I got… I was confused. God, Arin.”

“Iso,” Clint said, gentle again, and resumed steering him down the hall.

As promised, there was a petite woman with a badger daemon waiting for them in iso ward 3. She smiled and stood when they entered, and Steve furrowed his brow in Clint’s general direction while Clint gamely played at unconcerned.

“Why don’t you and Arin get comfortable, Captain?” she suggested. “I understand you’ve had quite the day, and I’d like to talk to you about it, if you don’t mind. I’m Dr. Kerwin, and this sweet girl here is Yasha.”

Steve settled Arin against the padded corner of the room and hesitated with his hands on the hem of his shirt.

“I do believe skin-to-skin contact would be best in this case, Captain. Let’s not worry overmuch about propriety, alright? Agent Barton, I’ve got this from here. We’ll call you if we need you.”

***

Even though he’d been dismissed and Nat was _handling_ everything, Clint felt a restless drive to _fix things_. He was tempted to try the firing range, but the thought of perhaps having to talk to other agents made him a tad nauseous, and he found himself following the decks down until the engine noise was a constant pressure against his eardrums and he had to grab ear protection off a hook.

Down until the whole helicarrier seemed to pulse with the beat of its engines.

Down, he realized after he got there, where Tony was most likely to go. Clint glanced up at Lerome, who was glide-hopping from perch to perch as Clint made his way through the helicarrier. Lerome was smugly pleased, and Clint wondered if his daemon was losing it… he’d never been equipped to handle someone like Tony, and any attempt to would probably make things worse.

He found Tony shirtless and stroking Serya, and he toggled the comm function of the ear protection. Tony had made them short-range; one could only hear the conversation of people who were near enough that you’d normally be able to overhear.

“Found you,” Clint said, settling in next to Tony and not touching him despite the protective urges. His face was still bleak. “You selfish dick,” Clint added, after a second. Tony glanced up at him and Clint shrugged, a ‘you started it’ sort of gesture. A younger brother gesture, not that Tony would really have experience in that.

Serya butted her face against Tony’s hand, and Tony put all of his focus back on her. Tony was always a bit weird about her, and it made him self conscious of Lerome, who chose that moment to swoop down and perch on Clint’s head. He offered a finger for nibbling, and Lerome obliged, and Clint sensed wariness and unsurety, which, great, Lerome. This was _your_ idea.

Lerome settled, and Clint focused back on Tony and Serya.

“Cap’s really screwed up,” Clint said. “He thinks he hurt you.”

No response.

“Did he?”

“It’s Captain America,” Tony said, like that was an answer. Clint might not know Tony as well as Nat did, or get along with him the way Bruce could, but he knew that Tony’s feelings about Captain America were fraught and conflicting on a good day. Clint was pretty sure there was no one else who could hurt Tony as thoroughly and unintentionally as Captain America.

Steve Rogers, on the other hand, couldn’t hurt a fly. Well, unless the fly was a supervillain, but--

“So,” Clint said. “That’s a yes?”

Tony looked at him then, but his hand kept up its hypnotic motion along Serya’s fur. “It was the weirdest virgin heat I’ve ever had. He only knocked my head against the floor once.”

And… sex. Well, press-Tony was better than some Tonys. Not ideal, but better.

“Wow; I don’t even manage that, if…”

Social taboo raised its ugly head and Clint had to work pretty hard at not blushing irrepressibly.

“Yeah, neither did Natasha, and she’s…”

Lot’s of ways Tony could end that sentence, all of them true, so Clint just nodded.

“So he thinks your issue is with the heat, which I actually believe you when you say it’s not, this time. What’s the problem then?”

“Serya,” Tony said. “You… have you seen the reports SHIELD has on… me?”

“Yes,” Clint said, because lying to Tony was never worth it. “But I’ve also seen the reports SHIELD has on _me_ , so.”

Tony nodded.

Clint moved a little closer. He was already between Tony and the door, but now he want to touch, bare skin under his fingers would be _nice_ , and…

“Why the fuck are your pheromones acting up again?” he demanded, pulling as far away as he could manage without actually changing position.

“ _Stress_ ” Lerome said, hopping off of Clint’s head and going to watch the door.

“It’s not a real prodrome,” Tony said. “It could be, if you pushed it, but… it’s just stress, like your daemon pointed out.”

Clint wondered if Tony wanted him to push it. He risked glancing at him, trying to get a read, but Tony’s expression was still blank and emotionless.

Serya, on the other hand, met his gaze coolly, reminding him so much of Nat in that second that he decided, no, not gonna push it.

“You need to talk to Steve,” Clint said.

“Not right now,” Tony replied.

“Not right now,” Clint agreed. “But you do need to talk to him.”

“I… would have hated myself if his bond had Torn,” Tony said. “I would have blamed myself for it, because that idiot wanted me and Cap just happened to be conveniently _there_.”

Clint nodded slowly. Serya had been in the rubble with Arin, he’d seen that much; but Tony wasn’t undergoing Bond trauma. Or… or he always was, Clint realized, noting the way Serya had molded herself to Tony’s chest, face resting square on the exposed reactor. Always, always touching him, except to flirt with Arin. She didn’t bother Lerome or Alexi, and Clint had thought it was something about Tony’s penchant for antagonizing Steve, but…

“Jesus,” Clint said. “It was true.”

Tony laughed.

“Instead,” Clint said, slow and sympathetic, because hell yes did he know how that felt, that guilt for things you couldn’t control. And the other side of the same coin, the anger at others for things _they_ couldn’t control.

“Instead,” Tony agreed. Then; “You should go, or I’ll forget this isn’t a real prodrome and jump you.”

“That’s why Nat’s not here.”

“Said she’d had enough of me the first time,” Tony said. Clint frowned a bit, but then… Tony had _just_ gone through a whole heat cycle with Steve. Suddenly, the idea of pushing the issue was horrifying.

“Yeah, I’m gonna go,” Clint said, and he scrambled up and away from Tony.

Tony’s laughter followed him until it was just static through the ear protection.


	9. Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, dear readers.

The heat… not a heat, but he hated the clinical terms they used for this stuff, so he’d just call it what it felt like, did not subside once he’d had Serya close to his heart, not even once he’d realized he’d been reaffirming their bond for hours, so Tony decided he had to go back to the main decks, maybe find a pushover of an Alpha to make time with, maybe to just go home and have his vacation anyway.

First, though, he stopped by the labs; he had some projects he was keeping an eye on, and three SHIELD agents were being trusted to work with Stark proprietary tech, and he liked to occasionally put the fear of God into them.

Plus, Bruce!

He hadn’t known Bruce would be there until he got there, but it was still a definite plus.

“Brucie-bear,” Tony said, slinking up to Bruce and implanting himself firmly in his personal space. “How are you, my angsty little studmuffin?”

“No longer worried about you, as of just this second. Tony, you can’t just…”

“Disappear from the infirmary, yadda, post-heat checkup, blah… You know, all you Avenger types are just variations on a theme, right?”

Bruce took off his glasses and turned around, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tony, we worry about you.”

“Next, you’ll be telling me I should go talk to Cap about our _feelings_.”

“I can scent your stress, Tony. I am the most oblivious Alpha I’ve ever met, but I can scent your stress. You _should_ talk to Steve, Tony.”

“Hm.” Tony snorted, ending the conversation.

“So, disregarding all emotions--”

“As one ought to,” Tony agreed, pressing further into Bruce’s personal space. He smelled good, like ozone and cotton and Tony’s own soap.

“How are you physically?”

“Hm?”

“Virgin heat with a meta; and you were just bragging that it had been over eight heats since the last time you got caught out with a partner. I’m…”

“Concerned? God, Bruce,” Tony pulled back, but… Bruce was concerned, and it was nice, actually, that Bruce and Clint and Nat were all so freaking concerned. Pepper was usually the only one with concerns, and she tended to be shrill about them.

Tony sighed and pressed up against Bruce, and Serya’s whiskers brushed Bruce’s cheek but he didn’t jerk away like Nat had when they’d been hugging, and he did smell nice.

“It was possibly the most considerate I’ve ever seen an Alpha in heat,” Tony admitted.

Bruce patted Tony’s shoulder. “That must have sucked.”

Tony sighed and pressed closer. “Not as much as previous acquaintance with me seems to indicate,” he whispered, and Bruce made a soothing noise in the back of his throat.

“You know, I think it might have been because of the Serum,” Tony said. “Some sort of meta-human … effect.”

“Really,” Bruce said.

“Yes. In fact, since, as you said, you can smell the stress on me… it wouldn’t take much to push this into an actual prodrome, would it?”

“No, probably not.”

“And then I’d have two data points. For comparison purposes.”

“No, Tony.”

Tony sighed, but unlike Clint and Natasha, Bruce didn’t push him away or leave.

“That’s what Clint and Natasha said,” Tony muttered, feeling pouty and… Omega-ish, which was horribly out of character. _Stress_ he reminded himself.

“I’m not shocked,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s… there’s good reasons for going through heat alone, you know,” Tony said. “I just… you were _worried_. Alphas don’t usually… yeah. Anyway, I’ll just…” He trailed off and tried to pull away, but Bruce’s grip tightened.

“No, Tony.” Bruce sounded firm and un-Bruce-like, which is probably the only reason Tony didn’t push his escape particularly firmly.

“Why not?” Tony asked.

Bruce sighed, and his grip slackened enough that Tony could look him in the eyes. “Steve is an Alpha, right? Have you ever… no, probably not. You were never around other Omegas much as an adult, were you?”

“No-o…” Tony said, drawing the word out. It wasn’t like other Omegas wanted particularly to be associated with Tony Stark: genius, billionaire, slut.

“The Avengers are all Alphas, though,” Bruce started.

“Except me,” Tony interjected, smirking cruelly. He would own his greatest flaws. He would wear them like banners until the day they finally managed to trip him off this mortal coil.

“Except you,” Bruce said with an indulgent little smile that on anyone else, Tony would have taken offense at. “But did you never wonder how we managed to work it out among ourselves?”

“I figured you all just postured until Cap showed up and then, you know. Stopped?”

Bruce laughed a little. “Not exactly. But we do all trust and respect Steve. We listen to him in battle. It’s… instinctive. And you, Tony? You just went through a full heat cycle with him. You… to our basest instincts, you’re his for right now. I think it’s a sort of pheremonal imprinting, but I’m not an anthropologist, so I wouldn’t… But anyway.”

“It’s not… me.”

“It isn’t and it is, Tony.”

Tony sighed.

“You should go talk to him. Please. For me?”

Bruce fluttered his eyelashes. It was disconcerting, but… Tony secretly, in the deepest parts of himself that he never told about, the empty dark bits with pain and blood and vengeance in them, liked it when his Alphas turned flirty and manipulative and Omega-y on him.

Tony nodded. “Like this?” he asked after a second’s contemplation.

“Yes. Exactly like that. He’ll know what it means, and he won’t…”

Bruce let go of Tony, taking another step back. “You need to know that he won’t act unless it’s a full on heat. Because. I know you, Tony.”

Terrifying words.

“I do know that. We were in an eight foot concrete cube and he still waited for me to beg.”

Bruce’s eyebrow went up.

“Well, reaffirm it anyway. It may help.”

Tony didn’t want to see Arin, even more than he didn’t want to see Cap. But he didn’t want to admit that to Bruce, so he left the labs.


	10. Chapter 10

The pamphlets Dr. Kerwin had brought with her were spread around the padded floor like so much glossy, colorful confetti, and despite the fact that he had Arin, pressed up against his back as close as he could come, tongue occasionally flicking out to lave Steve’s neck with affection, he was still unsettled.

He felt too large for his own skin, and Arin’s thoughts and emotions were chasing across their link like bright sparks of pain, and he kept clinging too tightly to them, as if they might disappear again.

Dr. Kerwin said that it was unlikely to happen unless they were so forcibly separated a second time, but admitted readily that she was more an expert in young Omegas’ post-heat problems than in bond trauma.

“Then why are you here?” he’d asked.

“Natasha sent me. We don’t have anything like me for Alphas on the helicarrier, and I am a trained psychologist,” she’d replied. “Do you have any specific questions for me, or should I turn on lecture mode?”

He had stared at her, agape, until she’d whipped out those pamphlets and started explaining, far more thoroughly than Tony had, the chemical and biological facts of heat, and how Alphas and Omegas responded to it.

He’d asked questions. She’d smiled and responded with a frankness he’d only found in Iron Man (and Tony,) thus far, and so he’d steered the conversation in other directions, asking about history and other science things he didn’t understand.

He asked about AIs, and she’d laughed and said there were no such things outside of movies.

He asked about going through heat alone.

“No one would do that to themselves. Even unpartnered Omegas tend to have loose associations with unpartnered Alphas they can trust for their time. It’s really… it’s quite unpleasant to put off, more unpleasant than simply finding an Alpha to go through with it with, and… Well. No one would do that to themselves, Steve.”

“But; it’s… it’s uncontrolled,” Steve said. “That can’t be pleasant either.”

“Thus, Alphas we trust. Omegas, unlike Alphas, usually have no mental blocks about surrendering control. You can’t think of Omegas reacting to the situation the way you would; you’ve got to respect that there are biological differences.”

“Dr. Kerwin?” Tony said from the doorway, and Steve looked up to see him, shirtless with Serya bundled in front of the arc reactor. He smelled _off_ , like he needed…

Steve didn’t know what he needed, and he knew now that he couldn’t trust the pheromones to be exactly right, so he tamped down the urge to bundle Tony into the room next to him and Arin, to impose himself between Tony and the world.

“What are you doing here?”

“Natasha called me in. Apparently, Steve is having trouble adjusting to the facts of Alpha/Omega biologies.”

“You handle Omegas,” Tony said flatly.

“Normally, yes. Not that you would know about that, Tony. Would you like me to pencil you in for a session? I’ve heard you just went through a full heat cycle, and traditionally, that’s when people come to see me.”

She smiled blandly at Tony, and Tony, already a ball of tension, tensed harder.

Steve _growled._

Tony started, but he relaxed slightly, Serya still cuddled against his chest protectively, his scent still off, but slightly less…

Arin dragged himself away from Steve, and Steve could still feel the sparks of his emotions, which lined up quite thoroughly with his own, and sat down directly between Tony and Dr. Kerwin.

“Steve, remember what we discussed about pheromones? What you’re feeling right now feels normal, but it’s actually a result of the altered chemical state your body is in due to the very recent… events you have gone through with Tony.”

“Events?” Tony said, sounding more like himself. “Your job is to help Omegas handle the realities of _being Omegas_ and you can’t even call a heat a heat? Get out.”

“Tony, really, maybe we should all have a conversation here? Steve is very concerned about his behavior. We need to reassure him that what happened was all perfectly--”

“Out. This is isolation, is it not?”

“The same argument could be applied against your presence, and besides, Natasha asked me to…”

“I don’t care,” Tony said. “Leave.”

Steve stood up. He felt woozy and useless, but both Dr. Kerwin and Tony shut up to look at him.

“You should listen to him,” Steve said, and to his surprise, it still sounded growling and mean. He wanted to put a hand to his head; he wanted to _stop growling at the Omega_ ; he wanted to protect Tony Stark.

She left.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said once he’d caught his breath and could think again. “That was out of line. I know you don’t appreciate--”

“I don’t like her,” Tony admitted, curt and brusque and forgiving all at once. “She’s too much of an Omega, not enough a real person. Do I come across as nurturing?” He was looking at Tony.

“Not really,” Steve said. “But I know you could be.”

“Because I’m an Omega, right,” Tony said before sighing.

“Because I’ve seen your bots; I’ve watched you debug JARVIS.”

Tony looked at him, and it was a vulnerable, exposed sort of look. Serya twisted in Tony’s arms until he was forced to set her down, and she promptly went and started rubbing her cheek against Arin.

Steve brushed his hand against the phantom feeling that brought to his own face, and dropped it immediately.

“Sorry,” he said again.

Tony shook his head.

“I’m glad, damn it!” he snapped. “I’m… I’m _fucking ecstatic_ that you and Arin still. I.” He shook his head. “I’m _glad_ , and he sounded so resigned that Steve went to him.

He thought it might be a mistake when Tony went stiff beneath his touch, and when he could smell Tony’s skin and it was so hard to not push him against a wall and start rutting, just a little, just enough to make the Omega more responsive, to tilt them both over the edge again.

But then Tony caved, relaxing all at once so that Steve was supporting the entirety of his weight, and turning his face in against Steve’s bare chest.

“I’m selfish, Cap,” Tony said, sounding bitter. “I’m so fucking selfish, and you didn’t deserve that for your first time with an Omega in heat.”

“Selfish?” Steve asked. His hand settled at the back of Tony’s neck, thumb brushing the bite mark he’d left. The gesture settled the parts of him that wanted to _push_ into a low hum, not the overwhelming chorus they had been.

“I-- why did you get to be okay? Why not me?”

Steve felt cold all over, and he guided Tony down to the ground so he could put his back to the wall. Safe. He and Arin were safe. Serya started grooming Arin, and Steve could feel her tongue against his fur, little prickles of awareness that were distracting enough that he knew he would have to let go of the death grip he had on their bond or he was going to let his control slip, and Tony didn’t need that.

_It’s just chemicals in the air,_ he reminded himself. The mark he’d left on Tony’s neck was a perfect purple color, and… _Just. Chemicals_.

He relaxed mentally, until Arin was just a light buzz at the core of his being. Then he focused on Tony.

“Am I selfish too, then?”

Tony jerked back, putting much appreciated space between the two of them. The exposed face of the arc reactor glared at Steve like a beacon.

“No.” Tony’s voice held more conviction than Steve had really thought him capable of. “You’re Captain America.”

“I’m Steve,” he corrected in the way he’d never been able to pin Tony down long enough to do until now. “And when I realized Arin wasn’t hurt, and I thought about what you told me, and how your breathing was the only thing I could notice that didn’t remind me that I was supposed to have a daemon, I was glad.”

Tony froze.

“That’s pretty selfish, right? I was glad you went through the same thing because then you could help me?”

Tony shook his head slowly. “You were just lucky we got trapped in the same place. Hell, you wouldn’t have been caught in that explosion at all if it weren’t for me.”

“So if my being glad for those few moments before I realized what I was glad _for_ wasn’t selfish, how is you being upset that the same thing happened to you but not me any different?”

Tony glared at him, and Steve smiled, knowing he’d won.

Tony grabbed one of the pamphlets and stared at it, then threw it down in disgust. Steve glanced at it. It was the one about preventing pregnancy.

“You’d think,” he said slowly, and he hadn’t mentioned it before because it seemed impolite given how gung ho Dr. Kerwin was about heat, “That if you can make hormones that stop pregnancy, you could make hormones that stop heat.”

“Good luck getting that past the FDA,” Tony murmured, staring at his hands now. “People’ve tried, a couple times, but the efforts always fizzled. ‘It’s not _natural_ to not have heat,’ they say, and all the older, grumpier, white, rich Alphas talk about the safety of young Omegas and no one buys any of it, and then--” he spread his hands helplessly.

Steve shook his head, feeling a little disgusted himself.

He picked up one of the pamphlets he’d actually read, the one about inducing responses in others, and he flipped through it again, casual since he remembered what it said exactly anyway, and then he looked over at Tony, who was watching him ever so carefully. His fingers were twitching, and Serya was still busily grooming Arin. Apparently his daemon was particularly unkempt today.

“This says that I had no control, no choice.”

“Are we-- you really want to talk about this? Now?”

Steve shrugged.

“Cap, you really, really didn’t.”

“It felt like I did. But I made a promise, and then I went back on it, and… I don’t behave that way, not without good reason.”

“Promise?” Tony edged closer to where Arin and Serya were touching.

“You looked so horrified, so disgusted when it first… During the prodrome stage,” he corrected politely.

“I hate that word, for the record.” Tony caught the tip of Serya’s tail in his fist. She tugged it free. His hand hovered over her and Arin, indecisive.

“Anyway, whatever you’d like to call it. I swore I wouldn’t touch you, if the idea was so awful.”

“It wasn’t you,” Tony said decisively.

“I don’t mind,” Steve said, eyeing Arin and Serya and Tony’s indecisive hand.

“It really wasn’t you,” Tony repeated.

Steve blinked. “If you accidentally touch Arin, I meant. I don’t mind. I did far worse while you were sleeping, after all.”

Tony blinked, but he settled his hand against Serya’s fur. She licked the edge of it but went back to grooming Arin straight away.

“What?”

“I… I put her in my lap. You were both asleep.”

Tony blinked again, but he nodded. “Okay. That’s okay.” He looked at Serya, then back up at Steve. “I’m okay with that.” He sounded surprised and a little confused.

Steve offered him a reassuring smile.

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said. He wanted to add ‘I wouldn’t hurt either of you,’ but he wasn’t convinced, fully, that he hadn’t already hurt Tony irreparably.

“You wouldn’t,” Tony affirmed. “They kept her in a cage.”

Steve flinched, and he had to physically jerk back from touching either her or Tony, the possessive/protective feelings overwhelming him again.

“What about you?”

“It wasn’t a cage,” Tony said, a crooked grin twisting his features into something horrible to look on. Steve looked anyway. “They’re all dead,” he added, looking at Steve and _seeing_ him. Steve’s breath caught in his throat. He’d seen Tony press-perfect, and coldly dismissive, and he’d seen him in the throes of heat and the peace of dreams, but he’d never seen this.

The things he could see in Tony’s eyes matched perfectly to the dark things coiled in Steve’s chest; everything he was afraid of about himself.

He touched Tony’s cheek, and Tony didn’t move.

“You’d never been with an Omega in heat,” Tony said then, and all the dark things settled back, until it was just Tony looking at him. “You held out until I begged. You didn’t injure me in any way. You… You demonstrated far more self control than anyone could rationally expect from you.”

“I still went against your wishes while your judgement was compromised,” Steve said stiffly, letting his hand drop, only to have Tony drag it back up and press his cheek into the palm.

“That’s what all of this means, Cap. _Your judgement was just as compromised._ No one expects you to be perfect.”

“You do,” Steve said automatically.

“I do?”

“You… you won’t call me by my given name. I’m always Captain America. You don’t want Steve, you want a legend.”

Tony let his hand drop then, but kept it in his own, tangling their fingers together.

“That’s… not true. Not untrue either, but not true.”

Steve stared at him, confused. Arin rolled over, brushing firmly against the arm Tony had pressed against Serya. Steve shivered, and so did Tony.


	11. Tony

Tony jerked away from the contact and gathered up the pamphlets with sharp, industrious movements, shoving them outside and moving back in close to the heap of man and daemon as he could. He craved Serya’s fur against his skin, craved the bright sparks of her emotions against his, but he couldn’t stand the way Arin’s felt, because it simply drove home _everything else_.

And he couldn’t take that away from the Captain. Cap was old-fashioned; he might _say_ he didn’t mind, but he’d also said he felt guilty for before, and guilt made men do funny things.

“Tony,” Cap said, offering him a hand. “I know I’m not supposed to trust the way you smell… the pheromones--”

“For God’s sake,” Tony muttered. “You can trust them, you can’t trust your reactions to them,” he snapped.

“Oh,” Cap said. Then his hand closed around Tony’s wrist and pulled him back down so he was sitting, pressed thigh to thigh with him. “But you don’t smell right. I don’t like it. Talk to me?”

The last part, phrased as a request, almost did him in; almost.

“‘Bout what, Cap. More Cold War history? How about my bloody legacy?”

“If you like,” Cap said, and he squeezed Tony’s shoulder, which was actually kind of nice. Tony wondered how he smelled to the big, manly Alpha to make him react like this.

Helpless, probably.

He scowled.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning,” Cap suggested, his arm warm around Tony’s shoulders.

“March 5th, 1946?” Tony retorted facetiously, but Cap shrugged, and Tony shook his head. “I don’t actually want to… no. Sorry. I mean, you need to. Someone should… I--”

“Shh,” Cap said, tugging Tony in against his side, then pulling them both so they were laying down, the Captain curled possessively around Tony like the end of a love scene in a bad romcom. “Obviously that didn’t help. So I’m going to ignore everything Dr. Kerwin just told me and pretend I’m… pretend Bucky’s advice counts.”

“What?” Tony demanded, indignant as he could manage with his head pillowed comfortingly on Cap’s biceps.

“Well, that is, except for this,” Cap corrected. “Arin?”

“ _Got it_ ,” Arin said, and then he seized Serya by the scruff and carried her over to join them, curling in against Tony’s chest so they were all cuddling, and Tony couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him.

It all felt so fantastic.

“It still wasn’t under your control, what happened in that room,” Tony said. The Captain adjusted him slightly, tugging him so he was pressed flush against his chest. Cap was leaking pheromones too, and he was hard, but he wasn’t doing anything but holding Tony.

Well, and then mouthing at Tony’s throat a little, where Tony knew he’d left one helluva hickie. Tony wondered if he should stop him. Instead, he stretched a little, baring his throat a little more, exposing himself.

The Captain laughed, low and surprised, and his hand ran down along Tony’s side. “What on earth am I meant to do with you, Tony?” he asked, and he nuzzled Tony’s throat but didn’t _bite_.

“Traditionally,” Tony said, wondering if anyone watching would say anything if he snuggled in a bit harder, “As the Alpha, anything you like.” The bitterness that rose up and choked him took him by surprise there, and he couldn’t help the way his muscles bunched and knotted, the way his eyes slipped shut with repressed fury.

The way Serya stopped grooming Arin to nuzzle his cheek where it pressed into the Captain’s arm, shocks of contact thrilling through him at the double whammy.

“Traditionally.” Cap replied flatly. His hand settled in it’s motion, coming to rest possessively over the arc reactor, and Tony didn’t bother with telling him how dead they’d both be if he fucked with the device.

“I keep thinking it should buzz,” Cap said after a moment. “Or hum. Tick.”

“Tick?” Tony demanded. The musing had the effect of letting him relax. Cap had no idea, of course, what the arc reactor truly could do. What power it represented.

"Tick," the Captain confirmed. "It's keeping you _alive_."

"This isn't a science fiction novel," Tony muttered.

"No," Cap breathed. Then, after a few more moments, he repeated, "No, it's not."

Tony shut his eyes.

For a little while, right before-- before he'd had his clockwork heart installed, there'd been these Air Force recruitment ads, all StarkTech shining and deadly: _It's not science fiction; it's what we do every day,_ and he was suddenly reminded of that.

"For what it's worth," Tony started.

"Don't." The Captain snapped out, bitter and pained and an Alpha's order at the core of it. Tony had wondered, in the secret parts of him that _were_ Iron Man, the parts that knew Cap on the field and trusted him beyond measure, whether Cap could even do that.

"Don't apologize for things you have no control over," Cap whispered, and then he said, "Sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you."

"Don't apologize for things you have no control over," Tony retorted.

"I have always had a good handle on my temper," the Captain replied, and Tony could feel his frown where it pressed against the back of his neck. Tony didn't doubt that.

"You know, that can be just as unhealthy as having no control at all," Tony replied quietly into the balm of Serya's fur.

"Would you rather I slam you against walls when you're uncooperative and demand you cook for me or... or something?" Cap asked. His hand moved lower, pressing now against the seam where Tony's skin met the casing of the reactor. The pressure wasn't any more comfortable than the conversation, but still Tony didn't pull away or tell him to stop.

"Honestly?"

"I have never asked for anything less than that from you," Steve said.

Tony froze, his heart suddenly racing.

"Why can't you be a normal alpha? Why do you have to be so damn perfect all the time? Real people aren't like that! They're selfish and messy and no one has wanted me to really be honest with them since I was eight and correcting my tutors."

"Eight?" Steve asked, dismay sounding through his voice like a bell.

" _Six_ ," Serya said softly, voice whispering in under their panting breaths. " _When we learned that love was only for boys whose daemons weren't seen or heard_."

Tony hated her, rage rising up like a snake within him to choke him and poison him and he saw red for a few moments, but-- "Serya," Steve said. "You're beautiful."

And he hated Steve more, for that.

"Wow," Tony said, once he could speak again. It came out cruel and brittle. "And here everyone was trying to convince me I couldn't possibly hate Steve Rogers as much as I hated Captain America."

"I think the word you are looking for there is resent," Steve said, sounding not at all upset by Tony's outburst. That, above all else, kept him there, wrapped up in Alpha pheromones and post-heat langor and Serya's and Arin's physical presence. That and the way Steve shifted their positions around so that Steve was flat on his back and Tony was on top of him, inexplicably straddling his hips.

Tony leaned forward so he could brace himself on Steve’s shoulders.

“You don’t know a thing about me,” Tony said, low and mean.

“So are you lying, then, everytime you tell the world that you _are_ Iron Man? Because him I know pretty damned well, I think.”

“Damn it!” Tony snapped, clenching his fists in Steve’s shirt and squeezing, squeezing. “Damn… damn you,” he hissed out, face hot with fury and something else.

Steve laughed, low and brittle. “Oh, I am, believe me. I am.” A hand settled in the small of Tony’s back to brace him, but the other curled in Arin’s fur.

“I could make it tick,” Tony offered into the sudden stillness.

“Why?” Steve asked, brow wrinkling. “It doesn’t need to, does it?”

“I--” and the truth here, the very _thought_ that Tony might do something just because Steve wanted it settled unhappily in his stomach, and he frowned.

“Don’t make it tick,” Steve said. “Don’t make this less real.” _I don’t think I could handle that_ , he didn’t say. But then, he didn’t have to; Tony _was_ Iron Man, and Iron Man knew Cap pretty damned well himself.

“Okay. But if you change your mind…” Tony said, trailing off.

“I won’t. Even if it weren’t about… about _that_ , I wouldn’t want you to change yourself because of something I said _in passing_.”

“But you would want me to change myself,” Tony said.

“Never,” Steve replied. Calmly. Evenly. Tony let his fists relax and didn’t let the soothing motion of Steve’s thumb along his spine make him flinch away.

It _was_ soothing.

The door opened, and while Steve tensed up, he didn’t do the usual Alpha things, didn’t shove Tony behind him defensively or growl or attack.

“Excuse me,” Tony snapped. “I believe this is called _isolation_ for a reason?”

“Mr. Stark?” the intruder inquired with deceptive mildness. “Captain Rogers?”

Steve’s thumb brushed over Tony’s spine once more, and then he sat up, shifting just enough that Tony was being pressed to his chest, cradled by his elbow. Tony, wishing he could be anything other than what he was, pulled away, his need to face the interloper on his own terms far diminishing the faint desire he still felt to be pressed against Steve’s chest.

He glared at the man who’d come in.


End file.
